Teaching Handbook

Rubrics

Rubric Overview and Creation | Articles & Resources | Examples

Rubric Overview and Creation

Rubrics help students recognize learning goals and guide them in reaching for those goals. Particularly useful in student-directed teaching approaches, like inquiry-based learning, rubrics can be used to assess content mastery, skill development, or even attitude toward a topic.

Developing a rubric involves clearly identifying and articulating specific outcomes of learning and structuring those criteria in an easy-to-use format that serves as a reference tool in guiding learning and an assessment tool for evaluating success. In inquiry-based instruction, faculty can work collaboratively with students to develop the rubric, or integrate the rubric by distributing it as part of the assignment description and/or for students to use in peer- or self-assessment.

For instructions on creating and implementing a rubric, see Idea 10: Inquiry-based Learning (IBL) Rubric Development Guide, CIIA Innovative Teaching Showcase, 2016.

Articles & Resources

Examples

Online Rubric Tools

  • iRubric, made by Rcampus, create a free account to use rubrics creation tool with other advanced features
  • RubiStar, free tool to helps to create quality rubrics from various assignment-based or discipline-oriented templates

Rubrics to Evaluate Courses

Note: These focus on online courses but the qualities generally transcend course format.

Relevant Books

Mentioned relevant books may be available through the CIIA's Lending Library or Wilson Library.